Kelly, Grijalva blast Medicaid cuts as Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ stalls in DC

Hours after the House Budget Committee shot down legislation advancing a Republican spending plan, U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, his wife and former congresswoman Gabby Giffords and congressional candidate Adelita Grijalva blasted the GOP’s planned Medicaid cuts.

The bill failed by a vote of 16-21 on Friday, with all 16 Democrats on the Budget Committee joining with four hardline GOP conservatives to vote against it. The rightwing Republicans said the bill did not go far enough to cut Medicaid and other areas of spending. (A fifth Republican, Rep. Lloyd Smucker of Pennsylvania, also voted against the bill as a maneuver to allow him to bring it back up for reconsideration.)

“It failed because they want it to be worse,” Kelly told reporters in Tucson, adding that House Speaker Mike Johnson is “full of crap” when he claims the GOP budget won’t add to the national debt.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the legislation that passed the the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday would reduce spending on Medicaid by $625 million over 10 years and increase the number of uninsured by 7.6 million by 2034.

Kelly said the various policies were complicated, but “here is what this means in our state: Arizona’s kids and seniors in nursing homes and working families are going to get kicked off of their health care. The latest estimate that we just got this week – I had my staff working on this to try to figure it out – but it appears that about 190,000 Arizonans will lose their health insurance. What that means is fewer appointments for kids with their pediatricians. That means fewer checkups for pregnant mothers. That means nursing home care – and by the way, about 90% of seniors who are in nursing homes are on Medicaid – that nursing home care is at jeopardy.”

Grijalva, who is running in a special election to fill a vacancy left by the March death of her father, the late U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, said the GOP budget plan would cut Medicaid funding while extending tax cuts for the rich.

“Republicans are taking away health coverage and they are denying the most basic health care to people in order to pay for trillions of dollars in tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans,” Grijalva said at the press conference Friday.

“Medicaid is more than a program,” she said. “It’s a lifeline. It means a child with asthma can see a doctor. It means a grandparent can afford their medication. It means a parent doesn’t have to choose between rent and care.”

Grijalva is facing former state lawmaker Daniel Hernandez, Gen-Z influencer Deja Foxx and political newcomers Patrick Harris Sr. and Jose Malvido in the July 15 Democratic primary, with the winner advancing to a Sept. 23 general election in the Democratic-leaning district.

 Giffords, who was shot through the head in a 2011 assassination attempt in Tucson, encouraged those present to continue their efforts against the GOP plans.

“We are living in challenging times.” Giffords said. “We’re up for the challenge. My own recovery has taken years. Many, many, many people helped me along the way, and I learned so much. I learned that when people care for each other and work together, progress is possible.”

Sunday night session ahead

As negotiations continue among members of the GOP caucus, the House Budget Committee is scheduled to reconvene at 10 p.m. EST on Sunday in an effort to continue moving the legislation, formally named the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”

But a number of issues besides Medicaid, including clean energy credits and tax deductions for state and local taxes, remain to be ironed out so that the legislation can make it to House passage ahead of Memorial Day weekend.

Some GOP lawmakers, including Arizona’s U.S. Reps. Andy Biggs, Paul Gosar and Eli Crane, had been pushing for new policies that would have reduced the federal matching funds that Arizona receives as part of an expansion of Medicaid to cover low-income Arizonans. That expansion, pushed through the Arizona Legislature by Republican then-Gov. Jan Brewer in 2013, would be automatically repealed if the federal match of 90 percent were to drop.

If that were to happen, an estimated 390,000 Arizonans who earn less than 138 percent of the federal poverty would lose their health insurance.

U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani said on Monday that he was pleased to see that policy did not make it into the bill, adding that anything that would trigger an automatic repeal of Arizona’s Medicaid expansion was a “red line” for him.

Ciscomani, who represents Southern Arizona’s Congressional District 6, has been among House moderates who have voted to advance Trump’s overall budget framework while still advocating against certain Medicaid cuts.

Ciscomani’s office sidestepped a question regarding whether he supported the legislation that passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday.

But the House conservatives who tanked the bill on Friday complained the budget plan was fiscally irresponsible. 

Among other demands, the House Freedom Caucus called for work requirements for Medicaid recipients now, rather than 2029 after Trump leaves office, a phase-out of Obamacare subsidies, and new policies that would allow states to limit eligibility.

Along with extending the Trump tax cuts at a cost of $4 trillion over the next decades, the plan calls for $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, with an expectation that new economic growth will make up the $2.5 trillion difference so the One Big Beautiful Bill Act won’t add to the national debt, according to Speaker Johnson.

Kelly scoffed at Johnson’s math.

“He’s full of crap,” Kelly said Friday. “This is voodoo economics all over again. It’s smoke and mirrors. It adds a tremendous amount of debt that’s going to come due someday, and all to give a large tax benefit to the wealthiest Americans.”